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Pronunciation:

Fang

Main definitions of fang in English

fang2

noun

‘As the wolf drew nearer, fangs bared ready to pounce, I closed my eyes and waited for the wolf to hit…’

‘Gemini shouted a warning as the canine bared its fangs and leaped towards them.’

‘The white dragon took a few bold steps towards him and bared its sharp fangs.’

‘There was no need for me to look up to find every single pair of hungry wolf eyes glaring at me, fangs bared and growling.’

‘I looked under and behind me to see the wolf flash its fangs and sharp teeth at me, giving another howl.’

1.1The tooth of a venomous snake, by which poison is injected:

‘the snake buries its fangs in its victim's neck’

‘Burmese pythons like a meal they can really get their fangs around, especially since the snakes are known to go half a year or more between meals.’

‘There I find something worse than a gun wound - a brown snake with its fangs in my arm.’

‘No slow toxin drips from the fangs of a jungle snake; already the mouse is being digested before it is even swallowed.’

‘This particular snake is said to have the largest fangs of all the venomous snakes in the world.’

‘But before the snake demon's fangs could get in too deep, it collapsed, headless.’

‘You take the brown snake, its fang length is about 2-millimetres, and in one of the patients that we had, the spider actually bit straight through someone's fingernail.’

‘He had noticed that the snake had blood on its fangs when he was retrieving Juu's knife.’

‘Diengo flinched as the small snake's fang sunk in his skin.’

‘The informant was skilled at what he did and made sure the snake's fangs went in to the same two holes from the needles he had made earlier.’

‘They have venom fangs, and a patch on their neck where poison spores can be launched.’

‘The snake slithered toward Jessica, bearing its fangs with a hiss.’

‘Occasionally, it would bury its fangs into the neck of its steed, ripping flesh and bone off.’

‘It was the picture of an oval blue stone, a green snake with long fangs wrapped around it.’

‘Typical bites inject up to 600 mg of venom through fangs as long as your thumb, and just 100 mg will kill a man.’

‘They have no hidden poison glands, not claws or fangs.’

‘Poisonous snakes kill with the venom that passes through their fangs, paralyzing their prey.’

‘Persistent myths about sea snakes include the mistaken idea that their short fangs cannot bite very effectively.’

‘The snake had dislodged its fangs, slithering after her with sureness of the ground it moved upon, then climbed up a tree.’

‘Joey opened it slowly, and out popped a furry snake, baring its fangs.’

‘The snake tried to hit me by striking its deadly fangs at me.’

1.2The biting mouthpart of a spider:

‘the spider kills its victims with venomous fangs’

‘In true spiders, the chelicerae are modified into fangs with poison glands, while the pedipalps of the males are modified for copulation.’

‘I even had to clean behind the dreaded tank-and if you were a spider with big drippy fangs and fuzzy legs, where do you think you would hide?’

‘Venom injected via a spider's fangs acts in various other ways, such as to kill or immobilize prey and to begin the process of digesting its meal.’

‘On accosting a prey, tarantulas paralyse it by sinking the fangs and injecting venom.’

‘The spiders have very large fangs and it causes considerable pain when it bites and it'll leave obvious fang marks that will usually bleed at the time.’

Origin

Late Old English (denoting booty or spoils), from Old Norse fang capture, grasp; compare with vang. A sense ‘trap, snare’ is recorded from the mid 16th century; both this and the original sense survive in Scots. The current sense (also mid 16th century) reflects the same notion of ‘something that catches and holds’.